


we need a forest fire

by davidfincher



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, can you believe this shit is canon?, i cannot seem to write anything for this ship that isn't dripping with sexual tension, rian johnson made me a believer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-02-17 11:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13076349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidfincher/pseuds/davidfincher
Summary: like two astral bodies orbiting each other ad infinitum, or so it seems.they drift closer and closer.there they are, waiting for the inevitable collision.(scenes from the force bond--the things we didn't see, the things we haven't seen)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [another shade, another shadow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDckiB3ThpM)  
>     
> the jedi texts and a staredown.

It starts as a tingling in the back of her head.

A single drop of water falling onto the still surface of a deep, dark lake.

She unconsciously pulls the blankets on her bunk tighter to her body, as if his very presence, even filtered through the Force, made the room colder. Fest was a planet covered in snow, but this chill was in her bones.

He sits on one of a million uncomfortable metal chairs on whatever hellish Star Destroyer he currently occupies, eyes trained on a datapad. He never looks up, but he has never needed to look to know what she’s doing, or how she feels.

“There is not a single thing inside those dusty old relics that you do not already have inside of you,” he says definitively, eyes still cast downward. She looks up at him, and it feels like she lost a fight she didn’t know she was in. 

“You seem awfully invested in me not studying the Jedi texts.” A ghost of a phantom of a shade of a smirk—or an involuntary twitching of a muscle on his scarred face.

“ _You_ seem to have forgotten that I am the only living person in the galaxy who has read these texts. I, too, trained to be a Jedi.”

She resists the urge to spit that statement back in his face. It’s been weeks, and she learned that shouting and hurling acid just saps precious energy she desperately needs. Instead, she stays silent, and absentmindedly flips a page, ignoring yet another impossibly ornate passage about the dangers of passion. Silence now drives him wild, because for years Snoke’s voice had always lingered there, in the dark recesses, poisonous and plotting.

But not anymore. She turns a page.

It’s a mind game, after all.

He bristles. As she expected him to. Like a child who cannot bear to be ignored. Or a jealous lover spurned.

The thought comes as a surprise. Not that she’d ever known a lover.

“I’ve never lied to you. From the moment I took you away from Maz Kanata’s planet of thieves and the moment you—“ His breath catches. She feels him searing into her, and she tries not to swallow, despite the dryness in her mouth. It’s a sign of fear, weakness. If there was anything a predator knew how to do, it was to hunt. She wondered if she was already in his jaws.

“—betrayed me. Not once. No reason to start now.”

“I know,” she replies, curt. “You don’t have to tell me that. I understand that I’m just a stupid scavenger girl from some worthless desert planet to you, but even that, I know well enough.”

He breathes in deeply, calming himself, inhaling the sterile, sterling silver air of the battleship, which mingles with the frost of her base planet and something else—something distinct and sweet and _alive_ that terrifies and thrills him.

“I don’t think of you that way.” It was time for her attack.

“If you’ve never lied to me, then answer me a question.” She phrases it as an assertion, not a question, not anything he can wriggle his way out of.

“Anything,” he says quietly.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks, finally looking up and meeting his gaze. The crackle of something fills the air between their eyes. Inexplicably, it fills her with excitement.

Him, driven, cruel, controlling. 

Her, determined, sharp, smug.

“What do you mean?” 

“Snoke is dead,” she says with a finality that she still cannot truly believe in. “Every person in the First Order is a merely cockroach under your feet. You are the Supreme Leader. You can crush them singlehandedly. Bend them to your will, even. You know this. So, what’s stopping you?” _From being here? With me? Training me, guiding me, standing with me?_

He’s in her head. She doesn’t even have to finish her sentences anymore.

“This again.” A sigh. “You remember what I said.” How could she forget?

_Let the past die. Kill it if you have to._

“I’m not asking you the same thing I did in that turbolift,” she answers, searching his thoughts for something she couldn’t explain. “I’m asking you for your reason. I want to understand.”

“Do you?” She thinks she hates it. Him. “You have personal access to every memory I have ever had, and this is what you want to know?” But she knows better.

“It’s the only thing that matters to me.” This hurts him, and she realizes it before he can bury it in a chasm of anger. She didn’t know she had the capacity to tell a lie so wholly convincing.

The connection cuts. She can feel the receding waves of his rage, and something else.

Loneliness.

She looks down and turns a page.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wine and an agreement.

She catches him having dinner, and it unsettles her, how human the task is.

He’s in what she presumes are his chambers (what kind of Supreme Leader deigns to eat alongside his underlings?), blowing on a spoonful of a hot soup. The action is so childish and gentle, it almost makes her laugh.

“What’s for dinner?” she asks, turning around swiftly, pretending to inspect the Falcon’s controls, trying to calm the way her traitorous heart was beating in her ears for intruding upon one of his quiet moments. She doesn’t want to see him like this.

“Coruscanti beef stew, I believe. With brown rice and some sort of lemon pudding for desert. There’s also wine from some Outer Rim planet that’s trying to get on the First Order’s good side.” he answers back simply, voice level.

“Smells good,” she adds. She makes sure to find out which planet it is, so that the rebels can avoid it. 

With less than forty people left in the Resistance, rations have been slightly less sparse but just as bland. Of course he ate like a king. Her jealousy was petty, but it was hard to leave Jakku instincts behind. She’s sure he’s seen snippets of memories of Unkar Plutt snarling in her face about portions and whatnot. A long stretch of quiet descends, the only sounds being aimless tinkering and quiet chewing. It upsets her even further, how _normal_ this scene was, for such an abnormal, irrational pair.

“What’s wrong with that old rust bucket now?” he asks after a sip of wine. She keeps her back turned, but swivels her head around, meeting his blank eyes.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teases, more flirtatious than expected. She knew that she is justified in playing tricks on him, but where that tone came from, she didn’t know, or want to know. He is grateful that she turns back around before she can see the faintest blush of pink reach the top of his cheeks. He blames it on the wine.

He puts the spoon down, silver rattling faintly on obsidian, echoing. She wonders if he listens to any music, or watches any holovids, anything to fill the gaping silence inside the First Order’s gargantuan ships. 

“I don’t listen to music. Snoke never permitted any worldly distractions. Silence is discipline,” he says, responding to her thoughts like an ocean wave gently crashing into another. He pauses. “Perhaps I should start.” She frowns, looking down at the Falcon’s console.

“In any case,” he begins again, mouth moving without his permission. “If anything’s wrong with that damned ship, it’s the hyperdrive. Powerful, but too temperamental. The Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs might be impressive, but you don’t want it sputtering out on you when you’re running from twenty TIE fighters in an asteroid belt.” A gulp of wine, louder and more nervous than before. She tries not to smile at the irony, the pure lack of self-awareness in his words.

“You’re particularly talkative today,” she remarks lightly. She puts down a spanner and lets her oil-streaked hands wander from her neck to her hair, fixing where strands have strayed from her usual three buns. She makes a point of not turning around, giving him a full view. Another gulp.

“Stormtroopers are not particularly loquacious,” he admits, rather painfully. “And I would rather choke on bantha fodder than talk to Hux for more than I have to. Forgive me for trying to make conversation. I didn’t mean to offend or intrude.” She chose to ignore the sarcasm.

“Don’t be sorry.” She uses this moment to finally turn around, finding herself placidly observing him draw a small spoonful of jiggling yellow tartness to his mouth. He avoids eye contact. She sighs, half tired, half relieved. “I think we both know that this thing—this _bond_ —isn’t going away any time soon. Until we can figure out how to end it, I don’t think either of us can spend every waking moment silently screaming at one another.”

The prospect of ending the bond fills his stomach with a dread that he shoves down as soon as it arises. “Agreed,” he says, exhaling out of his nostrils. He calls for a droid to take his food away before he drinks himself into more embarrassment. It’s a truce, but it’s tenuous at best. He can’t let her get the upper hand on anything.

The moment ends with the lingering feeling of her eyes on his lips. He is alone in his chambers, as usual.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> crystals and a surrender.

He catches her as she slips off the last layer of outerwear, her parka, scarf, gloves laying in a pool at her feet. His mouth turns dry. Every room on the First Order’s ships are cold, but he could feel a sweat break out on his forehead.

Hux was going on about something important, but his eyes were trained on the sun-kissed skin between her shoulders, soft and pliant and—

The red-headed womp rat clears his throat. _Bastard_. She hasn’t noticed his presence yet. “Distracted, Supreme Leader?” At any other time, he would have made Hux suffer for the pure insolence lacing his voice. But he doesn’t want her to see him do that. He doesn’t want to see fear and disappointment in her face, not today.

“Send all the pertinent information to my datapad. I’ll be in my chambers,” he orders. Hux sneers. “Of course, Supreme Leader.” He’d rather be completely alone with her than keep up appearances with the scheming General. The sound of his words prompts her to turn around, “Oh,” she says, the corner of her mouth turning upward in a—

Before he had a chance to etch it onto his memory, it was gone. “You’re here,” she says, poised, infuriating. _Of course I’m here. I’m always here. Always have been._

His swift legs carry him faster to the privacy of his room. He barely takes a step inside before shedding his cape, and working at the first layers of his black clothing. Two can play at that game.

Her eyes land on the scars on his back, dark and raised, remnants of fights that she knows he won in the end. Before she can control the thought, she wonders if Snoke ever inflicted any of them. He doesn’t answer. “Cold, where you are?” He asks coolly, knowing it will irritate her.

“Maybe so,” she answers, knowing that there could be hundreds or thousands of frozen planets in the Outer Rim. She wasn’t scared of him.

_You should be._

“I was thinking,” she begins, declaring the thought before he could edge in a snide remark. “Luke’s saber. It’s beyond repair.”

He stops his ministrations, sinking down into the same chair she recognized from his dinner. His belt had been discarded and his jacket still undone and drooping open, leaving the white skin of his chest exposed. She instead focuses on the scar on his face, the one that _she had put there_ , her jaw clenching.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just making conversation.” A beat. He doesn’t know what to make of it. 

When he doesn’t reply, she continues. “I don’t feel anything from the kyber crystal at all. It feels dead.”

He leans back in his chair, intensely appraising her, arms crossed against his bare chest. A guarded expression, a furrowed brow. A man weighing his options.

“Credit for your thoughts,” she mumbles. For the first time, she feels lost.

“If you were here, I could tell you exactly what you need to know,” he says quietly, leaning forward. Regret marks his voice, not anger, which engulfs her in fury. _I could give you exactly what you need to have._  

“I’m not asking for your pity,” she replies, using all her might to keep her tone as level and indifferent as possible. “It was just something I learned today. Nothing more.” It was only half a lie, which she thinks is an achievement. It’s more than he deserves.

He sighs, turning, shoulders slumping over the datapad on the black table. An exhaustion that she doesn’t understand lines the muscles of his shoulders. Fear and concern and sadness churn in her stomach, a heady mix.

She finds that she cannot differentiate his emotions and hers, a new icicle of fear that makes her veins run cold. Her hands itch, gravitating towards him, his arms, face, chest, everywhere hot and full of life. 

He breathes heavily, as if it took great effort to speak. “Tell Leia. About the kyber crystal. She has one.”

“What?” she asks dumbly, despite herself.

“Don’t make me repeat myself. She has one. My fa— _Han Solo_ gave her an engagement ring with a crystal that was Luke’s. Of course she’d keep that fact from you until it’s too late. Typical,” he spits, spite dripping from his every word.

“Low blow.”

He stiffens. “I would never lie to you,” he repeats quietly.

“I’ll ask her about it. I promise,” she adds lamely, as if her word meant anything at all. She knows she surrenders too easily these days.

The stirring amber in his eyes makes her forget the tinge of shame she felt at her acquiescence.

Breathless, he blinks out of existence before her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the truth and two visions.

It was just like one of the first times, all over again.

He exited the ‘fresher in nothing but sleeping pants. Water dripped from the ends of his jet-black hair, heavy from wetness.

She wants to appear nonplussed, but her thoughts betray her, rising from her mind like steam, edging into his consciousness. 

_Do you have a cowl or something you could put on?_

Silence. Of course.

It’s on purpose. They both know each move they make is deliberate, disarming, hoping to catch a sliver of vulnerability, a shortcoming, a lapse in their bridge of emotions that could topple the other. It tires her.

She sighs, shoulders slumping. She deserves it, for her recent stunts. He sits down on his bed, his weight shifting the soft blackness of his luxurious-looking sheets. She wouldn’t even know what to do with a bed that large. She imagines that, if she puts a finger on it, her hand would sink into nothingness. Ugly and seductive.

“Don’t you find it odd?” She asks, terse, neck muscles tensing. He looks at her, or through her, she can’t decide.

“What? I can’t read your mind,” he says, sarcastic as usual, but with no vitriol burning around the edges of his voice. It surprises him, his composure.

“Very funny. Supreme Leader of the First Order Attempts a Joke. Broadcast it on the HoloNet,” she bites back, caustic. Anger was a familiar feeling to him. Hers made the very tips of his fingers prickle with power and excitement and something buried deep. She is succumbing to it, and he would be amiss to pass up such an opportunity. 

“Enlighten me,” he enunciates, stressing each syllable. “What about this strikes you as strange?”

“Everything.” He can feel her cracking, or crackling. “It’s wrong. All of it.”

“You don’t want to admit it,” he replies. Her eyes are shining. With what, he didn’t know. “But it’s the truth, nevertheless.”

He pushes his weight into his words. “This connection should have died when Snoke did.” 

“But it didn’t,” she cuts him off, trembling slightly. 

He brings his pointer finger to his temple, tapping it lightly twice, looking her in the eye. The patronizing gesture filled her throat with bile, malice engulfing her. 

She takes a deep breath, gulping in the Fest base’s frosty, filtered air. She knows what he’s doing. Toying with her rage, making her thoughts and feelings bleed into the Dark side. A part of her resists, but another part of her craves it, needs it to survive. If anything, if not a Jedi, a scavenger, or a rebel—she was a survivor.

She remembers Luke’s horrified screams on Ahch-To. Perched there on that rock, she crawled towards it like a child transfixed, not caring if she fell onto the rocky cliffs below. She plunged headlong into the void with no reservations. That place, pulsating in her mind. 

Luke said that it was calling her because it had something vital for her. She can’t shake the feeling that it still hasn’t given her what she needed.

_Don’t be afraid. I feel it too._

His words to her, while she was bound and her mind open for him to take, felt like a lifetime ago. It angered her too, the way her stomach twisted, not unpleasantly. His voice was touched by a compassion she never wanted to hear again.

She pushed back, hard, the way she did in that room so long ago. This time he was ready, letting her in with ease, giving her a glimpse of everything she could have had, could still have. A galaxy at their feet, together. In his fervor he stood up, a single long stride bringing him dangerously close.

She counters the vision with an island in the ocean, just like the one he had seen in her mind that day. She imagined the sea foam dousing the fire in her chest, the spray kissing salt onto her face. There, she forced him to stand with her, to feel peace once more.

He ripped away from the vision, but his eyes continued bore into her, transfixed. “It’s not polite to stare,” she mumbles. He was simultaneously closer than ever and as far away as possible. He brings up his arm, palm open faced, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating off of him. His fingers twitch ever so slightly, and she is horrified and thrilled at the anticipation of his touch.

He balls his hand into a fist and lets it drop. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“The Sith, they had a saying,” he says quietly. He recites it from memory, etched into the walls of his brain since adolescence. “Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken—“

“The Force shall free me,” she finishes, recognizing it from her study of the Jedi texts. The ancient writers had criticized and dismantled it methodically and gracefully, but she could never deny their sheer magnetism. 

“Kill it if you have to,” she says, voice lowered to a whispered hiss.

With a start, he forcibly closes their connection.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> movements and an apology.

She was training, breathing heavily but calmly.

This was certainly more interesting than the plans for a new dreadnought, holograms spread out around him, scattered on the shining black table.

He looked up at her through hooded eyes. She doesn’t let herself dwell on the glint of want in them. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because it disappears in a flash.

She goes through the motions, just like Luke taught her. One foot in front of the other, quarterstaff cutting through space, she felt in control. Even with an unwilling spectator in the room.

“Any luck with the crystal?” he asks, eyes back on whatever he was working on. She felt both annoyance and relief, somehow.

Nevertheless, she pauses, correcting her stance. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I haven’t had the chance to talk to Leia recently.” 

“You’re on a first name basis, I see.” He scoffs. Another pang of annoyance, and a hint of shame, straight in her stomach. “And it is my business. I told you about the crystal, after all. And don’t you think I should have a say in the weapon that very well might end my life one day?”

Her head whips around. A pained expression, a lacing together of the eyebrows, a pout on the lower lip. He could curse her a million times for being so beautiful. 

“Who pissed in your Bantha milk today?” It was an inevitable truth, but it was still strange to hear it out loud. She wanted to catch his flyaway thought and ram it back into his head, as if vocalizing it would make it come true.

These days, she finds herself confused between what she wants to do and what she needs to do in this neverending war.

“I think I’m becoming an expert in telling you things you don’t want to hear.” She struck so hard with the staff that he felt a slight breeze from the air it displaced.

“Haven’t you ever heard that old expression?” Slice. The battered staff looks deadly in her hands. He is sure he would not mind dying by her hand. “’If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.’” 

“Well, what would you like most to hear?” his voice bursting at the seams with sarcasm. Secretly, he wanted to say something comforting, something with even a miniscule hint of heroism or chivalry, but, as usual, vitriol flew out. “Would you like me to tell you a story about a handsome prince and pretty princess who ran away together and lived happily ever after?”

A sigh. A shuffle of feet into the next position. “Yes, actually, if it means I don’t have to hear the… other things.”

He frowned, pensive. Probing. It was the same expression he had in that interrogation room when he sensed the deep loneliness that had carved out a cavern in her chest for so many years. “You asked me before, what I was afraid of. Maybe I should ask the same of you. Why are you so afraid of hearing the truth?”

Her jaw clenches, eyes pinching in concentration, sorrow, turmoil. He could already feel it all, seeping from her mind like a noxious gas intent on choking them both. “You already know the answer to that.” He stares at her, and she wants to cry. Her muscles are beginning to ache from the repetition of movements, and the sting of tears threatens her composure.

She misplaces a foot at a critical moment, sending her tripping backwards, quarterstaff clattering to the floor. He lurches out of his chair, kneeling by her side in an instant. She can’t help the hot tears spilling down her cheeks, the ragged breathing, her skinny shoulders trembling. 

He can’t stand it.

He strips off a leather glove, hesitating. He reaches out for her arm, the only flash of exposed skin not obscured by fabric.

Not since Ahch-To have their bare skin touched. The warmth that spread up his arm and into his entire being that night was alien and addictive and positively terrifying. He was as scared as he was then, afraid that she would cringe, push him away, mistake his concern (was that the only thing he felt?) for pity—

She gasps, and he would have taken the intake of breath for disgust, if not for her hand on top of his, small but steadfast.

 _You're not alone._  

_Neither are you._

“Are you alright?” he whispers, his face searching her own, tracking her glittering tears. She’d never felt so exposed, so utterly bare under his gaze. She couldn’t will the words to form on her tongue, not at that second.

It was a horrible curiosity that led her hand away from his, and up to the jagged scar that marred his stony face. He tried not to flinch when her fingertips met his face, the softest ghost of a touch kissing him. Her hand traced the pale scar down to his jaw, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Her touch made the wound feel raw, just like that night when she left him for dead in the snow.

It was an apology. An admission.

He watches a last tear fall down her face before she withdraws. The moment is over.

She disappears, and his hand hangs in the air, still warm from her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shameless self promotion for my new reylo oneshot, [bodyache](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141179). i wrote it in the midst of a bit of a block when it came to this fic, so i feel that it has a very similar tone. hope you like it, and i hope you had a great christmas.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wounds, both seen and unseen.

The Falcon was hurtling through space at the speed of light, away from the First Order’s fleet.

She was sitting in some blessedly quiet niche, dressing an angry red wound on her torso, clad only in her chest wrappings. She winced, and he did not know if it was because of the pain, or because of his presence. His fingers, already ungloved, twitched, unsure. It was not the first time his skin gravitated towards hers, and it would not be the last.

“Don’t even think about it,” she hissed. He set his jaw, feeling the anger pulsating from her. He knew he should have been elated, delighted by the prospect of her embracing the siren song of the Dark side, but all he felt was emptiness. The muscles in her stomach contracted from the sting of interacting with the injury, and he gulped.

“What happened?” he dared to ask, mouth dry. “You know full well what happened. Don’t act stupid. It’s not a good look,” she bites back. He caught flashes of visions of a legion of Stormtroopers descending upon a frozen planet, which his brain faintly registered as Fest. The white-armored soldiers shooting their blasters at any moving object. Screaming, fire. Blood on the snow. Resistance fighters being dragged half-alive onto the Falcon.

Finally, she projected the sting of her pain as hard as she could. He doubled over, almost violently, hands shooting up to protect an invisible wound. It was almost exactly where she had impulsively shot him through their bond on Ahch-To. His mind and body reeled.

“I—I’m not there. I didn’t know—“ He stopped abruptly and clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late. She had already caught him, her eyes blazing with an impossible heat.

“And if you were?” she snapped. “You would have given the exact same order as that horrible red-headed man. You can’t lie to me.” _Hux._ He sneered on instinct. The bastard must have tracked the Resistance to Fest without telling him, craving the sole glory of victory. Briefly, the thought filled him with panic. Had Hux any inkling of the bond he shared with her? If so, who had he told? Was he going to use it to incite a coup? Nevertheless, he had to pay.

“I’ll kill him, if that’s what you want.” It was the wrong thing to say.

She slammed her fists down on an invisible tray of medical instruments in front of her, metal clanging onto the floor, shrill. He cringed at the sound. It was like that night in the cold forest, when he had beat his wound as he fought, translating the sting of the trauma into anger and harnessing it to fuel his strength. She was doing the same thing, and it scared him more than it should have.

Her hands, still clenched into fists, trembled. Her fury had overtaken her fully, drowning her in darkness. She attempts to soothe her heart, ground herself in the moment, but it comes in unescapable waves. “We lost good people back there.” His mouth opens, and she cuts in: “I know what you’re going to say. _That’s war, scavenger. You chose this. Play the part you need to play._ I know. I know.” She lets out a shaky breath, decompressing. He thinks she has never looked smaller. His chest clenches. 

“That’s not what I was going to say. For someone who is literally in my head, you’re terrible at predicting my words.” She snorts. At least she still had her sense of humor. “I was going to say that your wound needs bacta. It might get infected if you don’t treat it soon.” He focuses on the cleft of her collarbone, preventing himself from nervously eyeing her injury, or other inappropriate places.

“We’re low on bacta patches. All our supplies are being rationed to the people who need it the most.” His compassion, if one could call it that, made her stomach twist in a way she didn’t understand. She blamed it on the blood loss.

“That’s ridiculous,” he snaps, bristling. “Go to the med bay and ask for one now.”

“You don’t own me!” she exclaims suddenly. He looks taken aback, like he had just been slapped, and she almost begins to regret it but the words escape her lips before she can stop them. “I don’t owe you anything! You’re my enemy. Stop pretending that you care about me. I’m tired of it.” 

For a second, he looks like he is about to argue, but the expression fades, leaving a stony mask of indifference. The coldness in his face is all too familiar, but her victory feels hollow. “I apologize,” he says. “I seem to have forgotten that you don’t like being told the truth.” 

She wants to scream at him, to use the Force to send every item in the room rushing towards him, to make him hurt like she does, inside and out. Instead, her shoulders sag under some invisible weight the universe has unduly put upon them. “You’re right. So lie to me. Tell me you hate me. Say you’re glad to see filthy rebel scum like me be exterminated. Say that I’m foolish for not joining you, and that you want to see me dead, too. Tell me lies. Please.” When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes and he wants to disintegrate into a million pieces, guilt clawing at his insides.

“I could never lie to you,” he says quietly. “I’ve already told you that. I can stay quiet, but lie to you? I could never do that.”

He is gone, and she stands, making her way to the med bay with tears streaming down her face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fog and memories, distant and near

“You’re back on the island,” he blurts out, standing some ways behind her. He was in loose-fitting sleep clothes, bare feet standing on cold, slick rock that he felt but couldn’t see. He had just awakened, hair ragged, eyes bleary.

She was sitting with her legs crossed and back turned to him, presumably overlooking the edge of a cliff. He absently worried that she would fall off. When the urge to protect replaced the urge to harm, he didn’t know. The invisible spray chilled him, and he wrapped his arms around his body.

She nods slowly, wordlessly, as if it took her a long time to process his words. She feels distant, and despite himself, his feet move forward, closing the gap between them. “Be careful,” she says quietly, words disappearing into the surf. It made his heart twist.

He stops next to her and sits. He should feel silly, staring at the walls of his room like an entranced child, but she projects a hazy vision of her cliff-side view into his mind.

He feels something akin to comfort.

She wants to take his warm hand in his, but it’s not right. The stars are out of alignment. The wind blows and nothing is in place, not yet. The waves churn beyond the edge of the cliff and she thinks of the cavern, and the ache of her loneliness on that night.

“What do you think you’ll find here?” he asks. No hostility, no sarcasm. Resigned. She thinks that if she cried, it would be possible to mistake her tears for drops of mist.

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll find you and take you away?” The wetness of the fog creeps into his thin white sleep shirt, and he feels heavy.

She turns to him and stares. It was the first time she had seen him in white. She looked at him, vulnerable and alone, just like her own self. It was a far cry from the monster who had thrusted a red saber into his father’s heart (and her own, hiding it was no use, not any longer) not so long ago. Her eyes bore into him, but not uncomfortably. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“After all this time?”

Something hangs between them, a soft, unspoken thing, hanging on by a thread. She turns away from him, and it dances in her peripheral vision, what they should be saying, what they could be feeling, if not for the fear of plunging into that abyss. She squints at the white froth that forms when the surf crashes into the sharp black rocks below.

Once, when she was younger, she had met an entertainer stopped with her troupe at the outpost, a dazzling, glittering girl. The girl had told her that every night, she was to twirl across a thin rope, suspended in the air between two poles.

She remembers thinking that it was fitting, for someone so beautiful to do something so unnecessarily dangerous. Such wonderful things couldn’t be allowed to exist without a price.

He cocks his head, and if he had partaken in her long-buried memory of the girl who shined, he didn’t let on. She can tell he wants to know the logistics of it all, how she fled the Resistance, what ship she used, _why_ she did it. So many questions were gathering at the tip of his tongue.

He wanted to smother the protective instinct, the righteous anger on her behalf that rises. How could the Resistance be so foolish as to let the last Jedi slip from their grasp?

But he can’t. It seems as if the Force is pulling it out of him, strings of bright red silk being pulled individually out of his chest. If he could encircle his arms around her, he would. If she fell, he would follow. Instead, he pulls tighter around himself.

“How’s your wound?” He asks tightly. He berates himself for caring so much.

She places a light hand on her bandaged side, feeling her own warmth. “It hurts a little, still, but it’s healing well. Thank you. For asking.”

In response to his surprised expression, she scoffs. “I’m trying to be nice, and you give me that?”

He scrambles. “No, I—“ He pauses, carefully considering his words. “The last time we spoke, it wasn’t on the friendliest of terms.”

“I don’t want to fight,” she admits, sigh fading into the wind.

He stays silent, frowning. _Right now? Or forever?_

She doesn’t reply.

“I’m going to look through Luke’s belongings tomorrow. If he has—had—anything that could help me.”

He thinks of his uncle, and the old, fierce eyes that met his own, Crait’s dry salt crunching under his boots, and the low hum of a blue lightsaber that simultaneously was and wasn’t there.

“’Strike me down in anger,’” he starts. “’And I’ll always be with you.’” She looks at him quizzically. “That’s what he said to me. Before he…” He trails off. Just as quickly, his expression turns guarded, shadowed once more. “Maybe he left something for you here.”

“Do you think he’s right?” The query was so quiet that he almost didn’t hear it, tumbling away in the roar of the waves. 

“He always was.” 

When he blinks, he is facing the cold durasteel of his chambers. The mist ghosting over his face is the last thing to depart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so, SO sorry for the delay in updating. this chapter was, for some reason, agonizing to come up with ideas for. i feel like i can move forward more freely, now, though. i hope you've had a great new year.


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